SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[tesco samoa]

adding more...

the ability to determine what can be traded , analyzed in a game at setup. the ability to set up what level the fog of war will be ( no info on alien races to complete info )

And the ability as an admin to go in and check an empire out or the whole map, what current orders are and what went on in communications. for current and previous turn

A treaty level where you trade tech without having to click on every tech every time and the ability to set up payments or loans to empires and charge interest. So a credit system. So players can buy ships , planets resources off each other using credits and the credits could be used to purchase resouces ???


I have mentioned some of these ideas before...

[larrybush]

I emailed parts of this to Aaron already, but here it goes again with some other ideas thrown in for good measure! I'll probably be repeating ideas in other Posts, so I'll apoligize up front for that.

If it would be possible when staring a new game to check box one of several Faster-than-light drive playing styles. This would really capture the majority of Sci-Fi universes for modders like me, and it might be do-able in your existing executable files.

1)The standard warp point movement system.

2)The outside edge boxes of each system linked to the corresponding outside edge boxes of the neighboring systems to simulate Star Trek style of movement. All warp points and warp lines are invisible, but all movement to the edge of a system will move you to the edge boxes of the next system in the map. Engine mod inter face to determine how far and how fast engines can travel per turn so you can simulate the differing capabilities of the various warp engines. The no warp points in this movement style or the warp points are invisible to the player would simulating the feel of Star Trek movement style.

3)A check box to only allow a warp engine/generator component to open warp points to various other systems based on a distance setting in the component text file. Warp points are not used in map construction; they exist only when generated by a warp capable ship. They would also close and disappear when the ship move is complete. This almost exists in the game now but implementation is slightly different. This could simulate Babylon 5 or Star Wars movement styles.

An ability to play in much larger maps > than 255 systems. And the ability to specifiy the scale of maps. I.E., this one is one light year per square, this one is one parsec per square, etc. This would be for the campaign creation aspect. 3D maps would be nice too. Like the freeware program CHview if anyone is familiar with it.

An ability to setup scenarios, i.e. the ability to setup multiple starting points, home worlds, fleets and research already progressed to a point specified by the scenario designer. The ability to specify reinforcements. Basically to step into a SCI-FI game/world that already under way instead of starting games from the "beginning? as it were.

And no offense to anyone, but cleaning up the TCP-IP implementation to let the computer handle all the proccessing would be a real help. Just push the next turn button and sequence any combats and have it all simultaineous and invisible to the players.

The ability to link mutiple maps for immense campaigns. And the ability to transfer units and such between maps for campaign continuity.

An AI that would be able to kick butt while playing the proportions mod (which is my favorite although I've modded Star Trek and other SCI-FI universes into it)

And to really step off the edge, it would probably be way too much work to make a separate ground combat module to better simulate that aspect of Sci-Fi. Possibly similar to a typical board style hex map wargame. Remember Fifth Frontier War for Traveler by Game Designers Workshop.

Hex or Square map for garden worlds, cratered vacuum worlds. Unit counters that are produced just like components for Vacuum troops, Mechanized forces, militias etc.
A separate time-scale maybe to blend into the main game. Logistic considerations to show the real complexity of future interstellar ground combat. These thoughts would allow players and modders to simulate game universes like Starship Troopers or whatever they’re into at the time.

Any one remember their first Space exploitation/exploration game? Mine was this little ASCII Star Trek game on a PDP 1170 home made "Home" computer, forget the name of it though! I think it was about 1977/78. Just after that it was a cheap little board game called Warp War, then Starfire whish SE4 reminds me allot of.

Oh well, I better shut up now!
Larry the wishful thinker, and the dismal programmer!

[Deathstalker]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet already but how about warp point 'ownership'? (maybe once an outpost/starbase/whatever is built there??) In this I mean an Empire owns that specific warp point and can charge $$ for other Empires to use it (tarriff) or can even refuse entry (even to allied Empires, refuse colony ship access etc , this could of course raise that empires anger level or even have the empire decide to shoot its way though ,etc) or grant entry though defenses (even though a treaty is currently not signed to avoid a fight etc). I would just love to keep my systems MINE, enough of the overly friendly AI colonizing planets in my system!

That and AI's that will actually go through with their threats (ie, break treaty with race x or we will punish you....etc)

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by larrybush:
then Starfire whish SE4 reminds me allot of.

It should. Aaron cites it as his main inspiration for the Space Empires series.

[Ed Kolis]

Admiral Wunderbar, take a look at Starfury for an idea of what combat in SE5 will look like. (With a lot more ships you can order around, of course! ) Does that address some of your concerns?

[Admiral Wunderbar]

Haven't read everything, but here goes:
- Event Scripting!!! Such as:
+ If Player2 is in quad21.sect1821 then
++ Set victory Player2
or
+ If PlayerX has ships then
++ For ShipNum from 0 to PlayerX.MaxShipExisting DO
+++ If Ship has ResearchAbility then
++++ PlayerX.ResearchPts += blah blah

- Unified abilities, in such that doesn't matter if the star destroying ability is in a facility, inherently in a ship or in a component, it's still computed normally.
- Multiple effects in intel projects -> as in an ability list for a facility.
- Divide points evenly in Research window will not attribute more points to a project than it needs to be completed
- Spacial Colonies: a kind of ship or base that can grow (be added to) and support population as a planet (with all the inherent modifiers)
- Even in 2D, lots of animations for weapons and it's effects.
- In combat screen: fog of war. You don't know what's hiding behind that planet!
- Ship turning counts as a movement. Either by 45 or 90 degrees as 1 move-point, depending on the ship mass.
- Inertia? Acceleration and de-acceleration takes a toll, like in first round moving you have max-speed /2 and to move less or stop you have a minimal speed after reaching the maximum speed.
- 3D RT rendering of some actions, like fighter launching, huge cannons destroying a battleship, etc.
- A pill for my digressing tendencies.

[Monolith]

>ASCII Star Trek game on a PDP 1170 home made "Home" computer<

WOW!!! I remember seeing that in the bookstore in 1980 or thereabouts when I discovered D&D in high school no less. I remember thinking "cool" when I saw the cover, then I was like WTF is this about, it's all asteriks and pound signs, not a Klingon in sight... hard to imagine I knew so little about computers then, but even harder to imagine it's how I make my living now.

Yes, I AM an old fart who plays computer games. Wanna make something of it

[ November 11, 2003, 13:05: Message edited by: Monolith ]

[Fyron]

And no offense to anyone, but cleaning up the TCP-IP implementation to let the computer handle all the proccessing would be a real help. Just push the next turn button and sequence any combats and have it all simultaineous and invisible to the players.

That is what it does now... you just hit the next turn button and it makes and sends the next turn. But, removing the ability to keep track of what is going on (ie: sending/receiving turn/player files) would be a bad idea in the extreme.

Yes, I AM an old fart who plays computer games. Wanna make something of it

Why would anyone do that? There are quite a few of you around here.

[ November 11, 2003, 16:06: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[larrybush]

[QUOTE(ie: sending/receiving turn/player files) would be a bad idea in the extreme.[/quote] Please Explain why? Maybe there is something I do not understand.
I would think if you could allow the computer to perform all functions in the tcp/ip host and player windows, like the process turn/play turn function and just allow the human to play, you know just use the next turn arrow. It seems like it is an play-by-email sort of solution. My context by the way is for LAN get togethers at home, maybe play files could be archived by the computer in auto-saves. Don't get me wrong though, I enjoy the game and give plenty of credit to the designers for a great classic game.

[Fyron]

Removing all of that info from the host is bad because all of that info is very, very useful while hosting a game. Forcing turns to process without host intervention is bad in general. There could be options to run the game like that, but forcing it to run with total abstraction is a bad move.